


safer spaces

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, F/M, Multi, Other, Transgender, Transgendered Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For some people there's no such thing as a safe space in the world, only a safer one. It's easier to make a space safer with help.</p><p>(Written for the 'genderbend' square for trope_bingo. Not Rule 63. It's more complicated than that.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	safer spaces

**Author's Note:**

> I can't thank queerlyobscure enough for beta work on these fics. I am constantly paranoid that I am going to fuck up when it comes to writing characters placed anywhere on the gender spectrum other than where I am, so good betaing is invaluable. That said, if between us we missed something or there's something offensive or wrong, I am always open to concrit.
> 
> TBBT characters belong to Chuck Lorre and to Bill Prady, who funnily enough still hasn't answered my question on Twitter about whether _this_ episode will finally be the one where Penny gets a surname, a decent career move, or less shitty treatment from her boyfriend. Hmmm.
> 
> * * *

Penny leaves Omaha, not at eighteen or nineteen, but at sixteen.

Vegas is maybe not the best place to be at sixteen, but she can get scripts for spiro and E – not the sort of E most of the Strip are taking, either – and as soon as she fills out a B cup she goes from the counter at McDonalds to the front desk at one of the smaller casinos.

(It strikes her as funny, ten or so years down the track, that she spends her teens revising her age up, and her twenties revising it down.)

She sleeps with people. Some of them don’t mind what’s in her underwear. Some of them do.

She takes the 20th of November off work every year, lights a candle in her small studio room, and sits with her hands in her lap, watching the flame until it goes out. She is always thankful that she’s still alive, always heartbroken that so many others aren’t.

After three years in Vegas she gets a case of itchy-foot, dyes her hair California blonde, and on her way she buries her old birth certificate, driver’s license, and the first sixteen years of her life in the Mojave sand.

 

She considers flipping a coin to decide which way to go, San Francisco or Los Angeles, but rather more prudently picks LA on the basis that she’s grown used to the heat – likes it, in fact – and anyway, if that doesn’t work out, it’s not like she’s left anyone a forwarding address.

 

Kurt is her first big mistake as Penny. Kurt is a chaser, and she doesn’t figure it out for _ages_ , and then he has information on her that means she can’t leave, because what if he tells?

She leaves anyway, going in the middle of the night, and it’s the first time she thinks about going north.

But she likes the area too much. She is twenty-two on her resume and for real. Omaha wasn’t home, Vegas was maybe-sort-of-home, but she still feels like LA could be The One. Except on her own she can’t afford LA, or Hollywood, or Burbank, so Pasadena it is.

 

Her neighbors are two geeky guys. And they know two other geeky guys.

You know this part.

(At least, you _think_ you do.)

 

It’s Raj who interests her the most, silent Raj, mute Raj – who, when she runs into ~~him~~ her at this one bar she goes to, this one bar where she can smile at pretty girls and pretty boys alike, seems to be talking just fine. Penny sees her from the back at first: sparkly red heels, short black skirt, red midriff top baring a killer stretch of smooth brown skin, and thinks, _hello_. Then Raj turns around and their eyes meet and she first thinks and then says, “Well, fuck.”

“And good evening to you too, Penny,” Raj says. Her voice is higher than Penny imagined.

Penny stares for a second longer, and then shrugs, and buys Raj a drink.

They orbit around each other for a couple of hours. Raj gets a cishet douchebro to back the fuck off when he clearly doesn’t realize that “gay bar” means “the ladies are also gay, so they’re not interested in you, dickbrain”.

(Although to be honest, that definition’s up for grabs, from the “gay” to the “ladies”. But not the “dickbrain”; that’s immutable.)

Penny distracts and then ditches a dodgy-looking woman who’s been eyeing Raj’s groin for half an hour like she wants to grab it just to _check_.

They’re each other’s wings.

Finally the bar is closing, and they go outside into the warm night air.

“I’d ask you to come home with me,” Raj says, holding her hands and giving her a very serious look. “But I guess since you were in there... I mean, I still have a penis under this skirt.”

Penny hesitates. Raj starts to pull away. Penny tightens her grip on Raj’s hands, throws caution to the wind, and says, “That’s okay.”

She says, “So do I.”

 

After that they’re basically inseparable, much to both Leonard and Howard’s disappointment. Sheldon, Penny has discovered by now, has more important things to think about, like the entire universe and its effects on the rest of the universe.

Leonard bugs Raj to explain how come it worked out for _him_ and not for _Leonard_ and Penny feels weird every time she catches a snippet of the conversation. Because, ugh. Reasons. Because Raj is equally happy being _him_ or _her_. Because Raj gives zero fucks about the contents of Penny’s underwear except as it pertains to how Penny is feeling, not just about whether or not they can have sex, but whether she’s having a shitty dysphoric day and just wants to sit at home eating ice cream and watching _Ellen_.

Howard settles down, sort of, because he meets this girl online. It’s kind of a long story because he was trying to set Sheldon up, because he won’t give up on asking about what Sheldon’s deal is, despite the fact that Penny has seen the way Sheldon’s face turns to stone whenever Howard asks. And so he meets this girl Amy, and tries to set up a coffee date for her and Sheldon, except that in the zany madcap way that these things sometimes happen, she falls for him instead.

(Or maybe Sheldon just doesn’t turn up to the date, and Amy and Howard make awkward small talk, and it just somehow evolves from there.)

There’s a problem with Amy, though, and it’s how she keeps making snide comments about Penny’s... well. Man hands. Broad shoulders. Something about her biceps being overly toned, for fuck’s sake. Granted, they’re probably _unintentionally_ snide, but that doesn’t mean that they hurt any less. They are insidious and they worm their way inside Penny’s carefully constructed carapace.

 

Admitting the existence of her less preferred body parts was safer with Raj, because at least she kind of had time to think about it.

(And alcohol. The alcohol helped.)

What happens with Amy is that they’re all sitting around in 4A one day, and Amy makes another one of her stupid remarks about Penny having masculine traits – this time it’s her _fingernails_ , because she broke one and so trimmed the rest right back, fuck – and Penny just cracks. Raj is mid-flinch and Howard is mid-giggle and Penny stands up, hikes up her skirt, and yanks down the front of her g-string.

“Any further comments, Amy?” she asks.

“Oh,” says Amy.

Raj gets up and puts his arm around Penny’s waist. Penny tucks herself back in and lowers her skirt. Sheldon’s face is a careful mask as he stands up and stiffly puts his arm around Penny’s shoulders.

“I think you should leave,” he says, addressing it mostly to Amy and Howard. Leonard’s the first one to get up, though, disappearing down the hallway to his bedroom, the door banging closed. Sheldon keeps looking at Howard and Amy until they shuffle out of the apartment.

“Oh my God, what did I just do,” Penny asks rhetorically, her knees giving way, collapsing her down onto the couch.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Raj wraps her up in a close hug.

Sheldon, who has been reticent about physical contact literally forever and who hasn’t hugged her since the napkin incident, curls in against her back, and slides his arms around them both.

“Sheldon, what...”

“Just accept it, Penny,” Raj says, his voice wry. “He only does this when he’s really worried.”

Just how worried Sheldon is becomes apparent a few seconds later when he says, his breath warm against Penny’s ear, “We should move in together.”

“ _What_?” Penny and Raj say in unison.

“I don’t feel particularly safe here anymore.”

“ _You_ don’t feel safe?” Penny turns her head and catches the sadness in his eyes. “Sheldon... sweetie, why wouldn’t you feel safe?”

“Because if that’s the reaction of our supposed friends to you having additional genitalia than what they were expecting, then what if they find out...” Sheldon swallows hard. “That I’m lacking what you have?”

“You’re...”

“My mom always thought that she had twin girls. I realized very early on that she was wrong.”

There’s nothing left to say after that. Just more hugging.

 

They find a three-bedroom apartment. Still in Pasadena. Still close to work for all of them. But it doesn’t have Penny’s memory of baring herself just to shut up someone she thought was a friend. It doesn’t have Raj’s memory of the first time she turned up in a skirt for gaming night and the way Howard laughed and told her it wasn’t Comic-Con. It doesn’t have Sheldon’s memory of the time the bathroom door lock broke and he had to wedge the door closed with a towel just in case Leonard walked in at an inopportune moment.

What it has is bright curtains in the living room made out of a bunch of different pride flags sewn together, and three computer desks in a circle, and a set of house rules that they come up with together. Sheldon’s whiteboards, Raj’s telescope, Penny’s favorite art on the walls. It has their names on their bedroom doors.

(Although the names may or may not correspond at any given time to who’s actually occupying the room.)

It still has Sheldon’s spot on Sheldon’s couch, but some things have to stay the same for change to be constructive.

They maintain contact with Leonard, but don’t tell him about Sheldon, or that Raj isn’t just cosplaying. They don’t talk to Amy so much at all. Howard gets demoted from acquaintance to colleague. Bernadette from Penny’s work hears about the incident and starts making a point of hugging her at the start and the end of each shift. Sheldon talks about paradigms and singularities until one or both of them shuts him up.

Their new home is not a safe space. Nowhere is a safe space. But it’s a _safer_ one.


End file.
